Voice mail systems provide a convenient way for a caller to leave a message for an intended recipient who is unavailable to answer an incoming call. Specifically, a conventional voice mail system detects when the intended recipient is busy or unresponsive to the call, and consequently answers the call by playing the intended recipient's audio greeting. Following this, the caller is prompted to record a voice mail message, which is stored as an audio recording in a voice mailbox associated with the intended recipient.
When the owner of the mailbox (i.e., the intended recipient) wishes to retrieve the contents of the mailbox at a later time, he or she dials into the voice mail system. The voice mail system authenticates the owner of the mailbox, and subsequently allows the owner of the mailbox to navigate through his or her mailbox in order to perform various functions, such as playback, deletion and forwarding of individual voice mail messages.
In a conventional voice mail system, any contact information that the caller may wish to leave for the owner of the mailbox forms part of the recorded voice mail message. This has several disadvantages.
Firstly, the contact information may be non-existent or, if it is present, it may be buried at an arbitrary point within the voice mail message. This makes it difficult for the owner of the mailbox to retrieve the contact information in an efficient manner.
Secondly, conventional approaches limit the type of contact information that can be left for the intended recipient to audio information in the form of recorded utterances or tones.
Thirdly, the caller who leaves multiple voice mail messages in multiple mailboxes must remember to replicate the contact information each time he or she leaves a voice mail message, making the process of leaving contact information tedious and slow.
Thus, the industry would welcome an improvement that overcomes one or more of the aforementioned deficiencies.